Explore UAB

PBRC’s Dr. Ron Horswell, CCTS Informatics, discusses obesity research efforts with CCTS Road Trip team.

CCTS leadership and administrative staff logged more than 1,600 miles crisscrossing the AL-LA-MS region this summer to visit with nearly a dozen of our CCTS partner institutions and affiliates (Auburn University, HudsonAlpha, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Southern Research, Tulane University, Ochsner, University of Alabama, University Medical  Center New Orleans, University of South Alabama, and Xavier University). Conversations engaged senior institutional leadership as well as members of the CCTS research base.

Our goals for the “listening tour”—to deepen existing ties, establish new ones, and innovate novel collaborative strategies toward our shared mission—were not only met but exceeded. Below we share a few of the exciting new ideas, some of which are already in motion, as well as a few snapshots from our summer CCTS road trips.

Auburn University’s Director of Faculty Engagement, Associate Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling and CCTS Southern Commonweal representative Dr. Chippewa M. Thomas presented her work during a CCTS Road Trip visit.

Ideas

• Developing a TED-talk style video series addressing health disparities research
• Producing grant writing videos and experiential trainings
• Expanding access to Kaizen games via a mobile app, including the CCTS Rigor, Reproducibility and Transparency (R2T) game and a new Good Clinical Practice (GCP) game in development
• Using the EHR to explore the impact of obesity in cancer outcomes as an alternative to using BMI
• Testing Vanderbilt’s Trials Today search engine
• Adapting the CCTS Clinical Investigator Training Program for institution-agnostic use
• Synergizing informatics and health disparities research with cluster hires
• CCTS Executive Administrator Dr. Jennifer Croker presented an overview of the CCTS mission as part of the Summer Road Trip.Developing guidance and navigational support for SHARe multisite study opportunities
• Planning initial steps for creation of a digital biorepository
• Offering One Health research training
• Leveraging complementary BERD expertise

Auburn CCTS Partner Network Site Lead Dr. Tom Denney stands with CCTS Director Dr. Robert Kimberly.More than 120 people joined us for our biannual Open House on Wednesday, August 1. In addition to the usual festivities, the event featured information about our latest learning, funding, and research facilitation and collaboration opportunities. Attendees included the new UAB School of Public Health Dean, Dr. Paul Erwin, who stopped by the CCTS Open House as part of his first full day on campus, as well as CCTS Partner Site Leads Dr. Art Tipton (Southern Research President and CEO) and Dr. Thomas Denney Jr. (Director, AU MRI Research Center, and Mr. & Mrs Bruce Donnellan & Family Endowed Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Auburn University).

Attendees flocked to tables laden with hot hors-d'oeuvres and even hotter information about our newest supports. Below is just a sample. 

I-Corps@NCATS

CCTS Executive Council Member Dr. Molly Wasko discusses commercialization of biomedical innovations with CCTS Investigator Dr. Stephen Aller, an expert in crystallography scaffolds of proteins.

CCTS leads an interdisciplinary team of business, engineering, and medical investigators from nine Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Hubs charged by the National Center for Advancing Clinical and Translational Science (NCATS) with developing a translational version of the National Science Foundation’s wildly successful I-Corps™ program. The goal is to better prepare the nation’s biomedical scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the lab and broaden the impact of their science. CCTS offers a three-week I-Corps@NCATS Bootcamp every September that introduces teams to the I-Corps@NCATS methodology to connect with their customers (registration opens soon!). A five-week regional “short course” offers biomedical teams an opportunity to compete for $50,000 in funding from NSF.

iPanels

To complement our suite of highly successful panels in support of research at all stages, we now offer a unique opportunity for researchers who have made scientific discoveries with commercial potential. Innovation Panels (iPanels) connect such investigators with the entrepreneurial expertise they need to start, or take that next critical step, on the commercialization journey. Request an iPanel via our Panels webpage or emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

CCTS Engagement of Communities Program Director Dr. Shauntice Allen (far l) chats with new UAB School of Public Health Dean Dr. Paul Erwin (center).

2019 Interdisciplinary Network Pilot

The CCTS serves a regional population heavily burdened with cardiometabolic, vascular, and cancer-related diseases. Through our annual Interdisciplinary Network Pilot Program, we seek to (a) ameliorate disparities in these and other conditions that disproportionally affect minority and special populations across the CCTS Partner Network and (b) develop the future translational research workforce in a spirit that fosters collaboration, team science, and innovative discovery. We recently launched our 2019 Pilot—learn more by visiting our Pilot web page, where you can download the RFA. Pre-applications are due on August 15.

K and K2R Writing Groups

The CCTS Training Academy is always one of the busiest tables at our Open Houses.

Our popular K Writing Group comprises six sessions that provide guidance and strategies for writing a mentored K-award grant. Learning objectives include which mentored K works best for physician-scientists and how to pick the right NIH institution for your application. Group size is limited, and you must be eligible to apply for a K award to join. Start dates vary, but in general the groups begin 10 weeks out from the next standard NIH deadline. The group meets on Fridays, 11-12:30 pm. If you are planning to submit an R-award grant in June 2019 and are committed to dedicating weekly time and energy, you may wish to join our new K2R Writing Group. For either opportunity, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to express your interest. The next K2R cohort will be selected by January 1, 2019.

Clinical Trials Initiative

The CCTS Partner Network offers exciting multisite study and innovation collaboration opportunities.The CCTS provides leadership for human subjects research through nearly a dozen different initiatives that scale from efforts at the Hub to activities engaging the Partner Network as well other members of the national CTSA consortium. These include implementation of the OnCore clinical trial management system and the GreenPhire payment system at UAB; connecting investigators to industry-sponsored clinical studies via TriNetX; establishment of the Southeast Health Alliance for Research (SHARe), a transformational research enterprise in support of multisite studies that builds on the strengths of the CCTS Partner Network; and acceleration of novel clinical trial strategies via participation in the CTSA Trial Innovation Network (TIN).

For more information from our Open House, see the list of materials below.

August 2018 Open House Drawing Winners

A typical CCTS Open House table, rich in info as well as calories.Congratulations to our winners listed below, who visited every CCTS station at our Open House and had their names randomly selected. Each will receive a special CCTS mug filled with our best swag.

Kate Wesson Sides
Clinical Trials Administrator
Department of Psychology

Shali Zhang
Research Associate
Dept. of Medicine, Division of Nephrology

CCTS Communications Staff Kate Matthews welcomes the first attendees.Jose Luis Roig Lopez
Researcher V
Dept. of Optometry & Vision Science

Sandra Colloway
Program Coordinator II
Dept. of Surgery, Division of Cardiovascular/Thoracic

Marina Mazur
Researcher V
Cystic Fibrosis Research Center

Open House Resources

Dr. Jennifer Croker highlighted the many benefits of a CCTS panel, including a higher chance of NIH funding that is three times the NIH pay line.“Whatever stage your research is in, a CCTS panel will give you an edge,” said Dr. Jennifer Croker, CCTS Research Commons Administrative Director, to the more than 40 attendees at the July Monthly Forum. “Our panels sharpen science in a measurable way, bringing together scientists from many different disciplines, which echoes what happens in a real NIH study section.” It is no coincidence, she said, that CCTS panel recipients are funded at three times the NIH pay line.

All CCTS pilot awardees receive panels as condition of the program, said Dr. Kent Keyser, UAB Vice President for Research and Co-Chair of the CCTS Interdisciplinary Network Program. The combination of the two programs is “unbeatable,” he said, as well as “fun.” “You meet lots of people, you learn about other areas of science you might not otherwise be exposed to, and you are surrounded by a group of people who want you to be as successful as possible—this is not a ‘gotcha’ situation but rather team science at its best,” he emphasized.    

Dr. Tom Harris credited his research success to the unbeatable combination of CCTS panels and pilot funding early in his career.Rather than ask attendees to take their word for it, Croker and Keyser turned the floor over to Dr. W. Thomas Harris, Assistant Professor, UAB Division of Pediatric Pulmonary & Sleep Medicine, who shared the story of his experience on the “CCTS runway to translational research success.” As both a CCTS panel and pilot recipient, Harris was well-prepared to describe their advantages to the audience.   

Harris’ journey began with a K08 that was essentially “too big to take off,” his CCTS Nascent Project Panel (NPP) told him. The initial aims of his career development proposal were too broad: train in cystic fibrosis (CF) preclinical drug development and translation of in vitro data into preclinical CF models and in vivo measurement of CFTR. His panel encouraged him to focus on miRNA science, assuring him that “career development will follow the science.”

His research aims were also broad and, again, the NPP advised narrowing the focus, as well as taking a more hypothesis and mechanistic driven approach. Harris “listened to his captain,” made a few “in flight corrections,” and was ultimately funded not only by CCTS, NIH, and the CF Foundation, but also two pharma companies. He gave the CCTS panel five stars for refining his focus, helping organize his aims, encouraging him to take the long view, and introducing him to a collaborator at a CCTS Partner Network institution who was an expert in the genetic research technique Harris wanted to learn. 

“CCTS support is beneficial at any stage, but is truly an outstanding infrastructure to assist junior investigators,” he concluded. “Panel discussions offer a wealth of expertise that will benefit any proposal.”

Dr. Adam R. Wende discussed the impact of CCTS panels on his transition from the lab to translational science.Dr. Adam R. Wende, Assistant Professor, UAB Dept. of Pathology, Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology, presented next. His experience with CCTS Panels taught him an invaluable lesson—to “follow the data,” he said. Wende came to CCTS as a bench researcher who wished to become a translational scientist so he could study the relationship between nutrient excess and heart failure, an association he had noted in the lab.

Wende’s panels helped him ask the right questions of the data, leading to the breakthrough discovery that there is a distinct difference in cardiac methylation in response to diabetes and heart failure. The initial project has matured into studies looking at how this finding is linked to gene expression changes associated with RNA regulation, metabolism regulation, and DNA demethylation. Most recently, his lab has found there are inverse racial differences in heart failure gene expression, with methylation increased in African American men with diabetes vs a decrease in Caucasians with diabetes.

CCTS not only helped launch Wende’s new career path, but has also resulted in the successful “take off” of several students in Wende’s lab, from undergrad to postdoc. He is now managing six different grants, including several from NIH as well as CCTS and the Center for Healthy African American Men through Partnerships (CHAAMPS). His advice, in addition to requesting a CCTS panel to help finetune applications, was to “write a lot of grants, don’t be afraid to find out who the expert is, and follow the data even if it doesn’t fit your hypothesis.”

CCTS Director Robert Kimberly thanked both presenters, adding “Partner with us for methodological expertise—even if your project is not aligned with the CCTS mission and we cannot fund you, we will direct you to appropriate funding mechanisms. We will also help you develop your science for another go with a different funder.”

Now that’s team science! Where can you go but up?

CCTS launched its 2019 Interdisciplinary Network Pilot Program at the July Forum. It is not too late to submit a pre-application! We strongly encourage applicants to review the complete RFA prior to submission. Pre-applications are due by August 15, 2018. We also invite you to request a CCTS panel. To learn more about the different types of panels we offer and to access our request form, visit our CCTS Panels page. To watch our July Forum presentations, visit the CCTS YouTube channel.

The CCTS annual pilot program is officially open and accepting applications from full-time investigators with a faculty appointment at one of our CCTS Partner institutions (Auburn University, HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Southern Research, Tuskegee University, University of Alabama, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of Mississippi, University of South Alabama).

“Our goal is to fund new interdisciplinary clinical and translational projects that are consistent with the CCTS mission, which aims to reduce disparities in health conditions that disproportionately affect our regional population, and that foster collaboration, team science, and innovative discovery,” said CCTS Research Commons Executive Administrator Dr. Jennifer Croker. 

The CCTS Hub commits up to half of the $60,000 direct cost award, with the applicant expected to identify at least one non-CCTS cosponsor. Awards are limited to 12 months, with a start date of April 1, 2019. The first step of the two-phase application process is to submit a pre-application by 5pm CDT on August 15, 2018. We strongly encourage all potential applicants take the time to read the full RFA prior to beginning the pre-application process.

So what are the ingredients for a successful CCTS pilot proposal? 

• Research can be at any stage along the translational path, from the biological basis of health and disease to interventions that improve the health of individuals and the public. 
• Research should address scientific questions of particular importance to the health of our communities, including health disparities, health challenges across the life course (e.g., premature birth, pediatric or geriatric conditions), health literacy and/or numeracy, and environmental factors related to health.
• Proposals to investigate the operational principles underlying each step of the translational process are also welcome.
• Special consideration will be given to projects involving community-engaged research, population health investigation, or innovative approaches to clinical trial recruitment.
• Collaboration is another key factor. “Special consideration will also be given to projects that bring together investigators from two or more CCTS Partner institutions,” Croker explained.

An updated pilot program web page highlights key dates and other important considerations. It provides links to the RFA as well as the pre-application and a flyer for the program. Please help us spread the word of this unique opportunity by sharing the flyer with any potentially interested colleagues! 

Questions? Please contact CCTS Interdisciplinary Network Pilot Program Manager Madeline Gibson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 205-934-7442.